Atlanta Braves-Team Preview

2008 Team Record-72-90

C-Brian McCann 23-87 - 301

1B-Casey Kotchman 14-74- 272

2B-Kelly Johnson 12-69-287

SS-Yunel Escobar 10-60-288

3B-Chipper Jones 22-75-364

LF-Matt Diaz 2-14-244

CF-Josh Anderson 3-12-294

RF-Jeff Francouer 11-71-239

Rotation

Derek Lowe 14-11-3.24

Javier Vazquez 12-16-4.67

Jair Jurrjins 13-10-3.68

Kenshin Kawakami

Jorge Campillo/Tom Glavine

Bullpen

Mike Gonzalez 0-3-4.28 14

Rafael Soriano 0-1-3.58 3

Peter Moylan 0-1-4.79 1



Whats To Like

1.New Starters-Atlanta long known for starters were awful last season. Frank Wren went out and got Lowe,Vazquez and Kawakami. Just think in the past two seasons they have turned over all 5 starters.
2.Help Is Closer Than You Think-According to Baseball Prospectus 2009 Atlanta has 2 of the top 13 prospects in all of baseball. Tommy Hanson is a pitcher who is probably be in the show this year and Justin Heyward who has been described as a 6ft 4in toolsy outfielder. He is probably 2 years away which may be when Atlanta will be close to contending

Whats Not to Like

1.Can I Please Have Some Relief-The bullpen is a mess. No closer saved more than 15 games and the top 3 guys Gonzalez, Moylan and Soriano all have histories of injury.
2.Power Outage-If you look at the key power positions 1B,LF and RF the Braves have a serious lack of power. Last season the Braves playing in a neutral park hit 33 HRs less than the NL average. And they did nothing to address this need.

Fantasy Focus

Jeff Francouer-As you can see from the above stats for Francouer he was awful last season. The big question will be will the 2009 Francouer be closer to the disappointing 2008 version or the promising 2007? Looking closely at his numbers shows two major problems. Firstly his plate discipline has not developed at all. For every walk he stuck out close to 3 times. At this point in his career that stat should be moving in the other direction. The other disturbing number is only 8% of his fly balls went for homers. This stat is rarely goes backwards for a player still in his mid 20s. My feel is Francouer will be better than last year. Its hard to imagine him being worse. But I don't see him being the player most of us thought he was going to become at the end of the 2007 season.

Fun Fact

The Braves had 9 Starting Pitchers start at least 5 games last season. Think back to the Leo Mazzone days their pitchers never seemed to get hurt.

Outlook

The Braves did a good job vastly improving their starting pitchers. But did nothing to address their needs in the outfield and the bullpen. Oddly enough that was the two places this off season where the most free agent bargains were. So my question would be was it cost efficient to pay Derek Lowe all that money when they could have taken that money and a got a power hitting outfielder and a solid reliever. Lets face it they won't contend this year. Atlanta will improve by a few wins but still finish 4th in the NL East.